FAQ - What do YOU need

[sabre0001]

Im just wondering - if you were to ask questions about a new mod...what would they be? What are the key elements that you all want to know about mods?

People come on here looking for teams and often dont give the required level of detail or answers so maybe this thread will show what they need to say when giving details of what their mod is about...


So...ask away!

 

[Puzzlemaker]

First off, Origenality.

Second off, FUN gameplay. Fun for everyone; not just the person who gets to be the leader, ect.

Third, Story.

In that order of importance.

 

[sabre0001]

hmm... i have been lookin at some of the threads containing examples of FAQ's so i was wondering what q's ye would have for designers of mods that could be slotted in...


Also - thanks for that reply...A lot of people seem content to play same things over and over again (as seen in help wanted - basing a mod on %£"$$ (Insert random game here)

 

[Angry Lawyer]

First: Is it legal to make? About half of the ideas pitched here infringe on an intellectual property without permission. Most modders won't touch your idea if you're adamant on breaking the law.

Second: Whether you actually had development skills. Nobody will join your team if you're an ideas man, a story writer, a musician, or a concept artist. Learn a skill. Coding preferably. Mapping is a good idea. Modelling (including how to get things in-game) is pretty useful.

Third: Enjoyability. A lot of mods have fallen on their faces because they're just plain boring.

Fourth: Originality. People don't want to see another generic WW2 shooter, or terrorist/counterterrorist game.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Crispy]

Key to writing a help wanted post:

- Introduction (who you are and what you're selling)
e.g. I am Fragger-05 and I've worked on 2 mods for Unreal Tournament. I had an idea for a Single Player action adventure mod.

- Elaborate (What is the story and why is it different? What makes your mod stand out? If it takes its cues from previous games, which elements will it keep and which will be improved upon?)

- State of progress and plea for help (obviously don't pleed, but show what work you have done, what work you plan to do, and what help you need at this stage of development).

I think it's important to show that you have a professional attitude if you want to get the creme de la creme of the modding world involved in your mod. You can do this by showcasing your previous experience, by taking a reasonable amount of time and effort to put across your ideas (spelling, grammar, punctuation, structure, style), by having done some preliminary story work, and by showing you have researched the game genre (you've played the games in the genre and seen what makes and breaks that style of play). If you can show why you've chosen the Source engine over other engines (and it's justified), and why you've chosen certain gameplay elements (and they're justified) then you will put across a much more organised image.

 

[Puzzlemaker]

I agree with angry lawyer also; it has to be legal, and you have to know your stuff. Before you ask for help making a mod, you should have gotten stuff done already.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Bingo. No amount of good storylines, pretty pictures, or grandoise ideas are going to help you if you're too incompetent to lay down the groundwork yourself.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[63]

Ultra-fast paced objective style killing spree with some large number of AI NPCs each player can command to fight in an all-out onslaught of senses. Machine guns blaring, explosions everywhere, insane vehicles with crazy amounts of hitpoints, rockets which can take out these vehicles in only a few hits and fire as fast as a machine gun, lasers which slice through players, melee weapons with crazy large physics forces and knock ragdolls back multiple feet into the air for that epic scale. A chaotic fight with some freaky techno music. Symbolism with easily differentiated forces like in Lord of the Rings, we can easily see the muddy, gritty black and red colors of Mordor which contrast the shining silver, white, and blue of the Human forces. Dragons, dinosaurs, spaceships, aliens, rag-tag bunch of humans Terminator-style, god-like beings all culminating in a battle of the ages, everyone fighting each other, factions blurred, exhilarating battles with large open spaces for charging at each other. People shooting one thing only to have ten, hundreds more swarm at them. In-your-face then rip off your skin and feed it to you action. Strider battles in HL2 only with lots of giant alien T-rexes, Godzilla things that blast your ass to hell with a plasma beam, giant starships, bunches of raptors amubushing your ass in the grass, space orcs, normal orcs, Uruk-Hai, Neo-style powers, melee moves of awesome, Striders, giants, fire-breathing dragons with wings that flap and stuff, Jormungand-huge style Dune worm snake serpents, Power Ranger mega-zords, ninjas, pirates, vikings, knights, catapults, trebuchets, ballistae, crossbows, longbows with correct arc that shoot exploding plasma arrows. Hydras, mthical beasts, titanic-sized robots of war charging at each other picking off the rest of the enemies easy as cake. Utra-BFG-styled-weapons that are a thousand times more powerful than a normal BFG that can kill anything. Apocalyptic magic spells or energy bursts which can completely destroy all enemies in an area. Flying vehicle fights in a huge multiple mile long space arena which can then swoop down from the sky to decimate land forces. Sea vehicles that can launch a carpet of bombs at a land target. A gigantic war effort that blows any other game out of the damn water into space, down sucked into a black hole with all kinds of ass-kicking. Think Supreme Commander only with an FPS and a thousand times more scope and an extreme adrenaline pumping eye-poking adventure. Thousands of things happening a minute. Hundreds of tracers. Things that can turn the tide of a battle only to be cut down by minor weak low-level soldier. Tactics like rushing or camping can be both rewarding and retarded. Good and evil fight each other and then some other guys. Every single thing designed to be awesome. Like rock-paper-scissors except the rock is a giant blowing up volcano with thousands of hydrogen bomb thetan bastards, the scissor is a frickin laser beam supernova explosion, and the paper is a dyson sphere designed to encapsulate a solar system or a galaxy or something. Thousands of deaths in only one round, people dying left and right, medics healing 20+ people in a minute. Multiple BF2-scaled battles which are largely weak and insignificant and barely affect the total outcome. Pyrrrhic victories, circle around each other flank my ass, Rome: Total War something like that, different groups and playing styles for every game player, play poker to beat a guy with a rocket, tetris your alien ass. Strategy is the overall winner as each side is crappily balanced. An RTS management system with a commander, RPG stat gaining system, why take control of a wimpy little space station or plant one little bomb when you can take control of a hundred space stations and plant a nuke. Crazy, mother****ing-assraping-violating all your senses, shoot everything that moves, think before you ****ing go there or you'll be swamped by a thousand Warthogs and Banshees instead of like two, giant bullshit, crotch grabbing, atomic bomb, large scale battles, every single second is another adventure, you spawn camp, you get wiped out by hundreds of crazy troops, twitch gaming, camping in fricking cave and mowing down hundreds of forces before having to be bombed out, gain hundreds of levels and become a god, giant Citadel style structures, Minas Tirith, Battle of Pelennor Fields, rockets are more plentiful than bullets, space ships whizzing above your heads, customizble classes, hundreds of giant colliding forces, bullet hoses, things that just kill in one hit, a normal player can't even be distinguished froma damn hacker because of all the crazy shit, huge war-torn ambushes, Save that damn Private Ryan and then blast all the Nazis to hell, Independence Day alien spaceship dog fights, **** you all, things that have superpowers, ****ing ****ton of ****ing shit mega ultra super awesome blow out your minds asskicking awesome to the ****ton infinite degree plus ****.

I would ask if it has all of this..

 

[JNightshade]

^That right there is a f*cking requirement.

 

[Flyingdebris]

does it have depth

a game without depth is a game played for 5 minutes and left alone.
For example. hl2 had depth in terms of physics use, story, and art direction.
FEAR had depth in terms of the awesomeness of their firefights and the AI
The old mechwarrior games, 2, 2 mercs, and 3. Had depth in terms of taking and managing damage. Neotokyo has depth in having a very strong art design.

If you have a mod that doesn't do at least 1 thing really well and in an immersive way, people won't be interested. Could be anything really. Story, AI, physics, details, realism, humor, gameplay. But if everything about it is bland like the game pariah, or any of those other bargain bin FPS games, no one will touch it.

 

[Pajari]

All I require is evidence of in-game progress. Renders, "planned features", concept art, or regular hl2 levels don't really do it for me. A screenshot showing something new in-game makes me take everything else seriously.